Archive for January, 2006

I had a interesting dream last night – I was flying with my boss in a 8-seater overwing of some sort – we were flying over a bridge, although not a suspension bridge, and waves were crashing over the road surface of it – we were flying barely 500 feet up, and I kept feeling as if a wave was going to grab us at any time. Then one did, crashed over us and we were being pulled to the side and into a spin, and then my boss was trying to pull us out of the spin and was pulling like a 4G turn, and I kept yelling about how a overwing wasn’t going to handle a 4G turn and then the tail broke off (not the whole tail. I think the rudder was still there – but the li’l bits that stick out with the elevators were gone. I don’t think this is a very realistic failure mode for a overwing pulling too many Gs but it was a dream, what do you want?)

The next sequence was a remarkably realistic crash landing near a airport in which the plane ended underwater but still intact, my boss finding the black box (yah, I know, a 8 seater with a black box..) and the emergancy radio and then a skip to me in a airport trying to find a commercial flight somewhere and all was bedlam and no flights were going anywhere and I ended up on a bus to somewhere in europe.

And things kept getting weirder from there although not, thankfully, scarier.

The thing is, I am wondering if this dream means I have a subconcious fear of flying – I don’t think I’m afraid of flying – I’ve been thinking of buying a little two-seater ultralight if I ever get out of debt.. (fully enclosed and with instrumentation, but a top speed of about 120 and a operational ceiling of < 8k feet - apparently the license test for them isn't much harder than a driver's license test and they're easier to land than a hang glider).
Now I'm wondering if I secretly fear flying - or else fear it in small aircraft - and just don't know about it. I've been up several times with my boss in a little Cessna trainer, and it seemed quite fun at the time.
Ah, the inner workings of the subconcious mind, always interesting to get a glimpse at.

The bootloader I published does not include the header files, and includes code for setting the internal osc against a 32khz crystal. If you don’t need the latter, be sure to strip it out. If you do need the former, email me at sheer dash panic at sheer dot us

1) I’ve updated my resume for those of you who care about such things. It’s at http://www.sheer.us/resume/SheerResume-ascii-wa.txt

2) Below please find a bootloader for a Atmel AVR AtMega8 which accepts a binhex file uploaded via windows terminal (or however else you would like). I’m releasing this code to the public domain at this point. Feel free to do whatever you like with it, or not, as appropriate. It could probably easily be modified for any AVR CPU

bld_do_program_loop:
cp XL, ZL ; check to see if we’re
cpc XH, ZH ; outside of the bootloader
brlo bld_do_program_loop_end ; do not program bootloader
; even if it is in file
mov TempH, ZH ; grab the page
mov Temp, ZL ;
andi Temp, 0xC0 ; skip off the byte address
; leaving only the page address

lds Temp3, LAST_PAGE_L ; compare against
cp Temp, Temp3 ; the last page that
lds Temp3, LAST_PAGE_H ; we used and
cpc TempH, Temp3 ; if it’s different
breq bld_do_program_skip_write ; then we need to write that page

Perhaps, since the youngest voters have to deal with the consequences of any actions taken for the longest, we should have a weighting system for voting, set up so the longer you were going to be on the planet after your vote, the more it counted for. I realize this runs contrary to the conventional wisdom that the older voting public are wiser. However, I think it’s possible they’re also more cynical, more bitter, or more corrupted.

Just a thought.

I have a whole list of thoughts I had in the middle of the night the other night concerning how to make a open source, verifiable, trustworthy voting network. I’ll post them sometime later.

Recently a talk-radio personality on a certain radio show that will remain nameless asked, ‘Where do rights come from?’. After very careful consideration, I’ve determined that they generally come from might.

That isn’t a particularly desirable situation, but it does seem to be how things are.

For example, what gives God the right to send me to hell, presuming that (a) there’s a God and (b) He/She/It* does such things? The ability to do so, is pretty much the only answer that I can come up with. What gives the legislature of the state of Utah the right to imprison a girl for having sex? Again, being armed with superior firepower is pretty much the only answer I can come up with.

I’m pretty disguisted with the universe right now. Yes, it’s got lots of beautiful little bits but people keep doing things to other people against their wills for no reasonable reason all over the place.

Another question one might ask is why is any of this any of my business? You could certainly make the case that Sheer isn’t affected by the war in Iraq – after all, I’m not that likely to be killed (my friend Chief Smoke could be, but after all he did choose to be in the Army and that is kind of a occupational hazard).

I guess the only answer I can come up with is that every time someone (like that aforementioned 13 year old who’s in jail for having sex) is wrongfully imprisoned, everytime someone innocent is killed, every time someone is treated unfairly, it makes us all a little less free, a little bit more in a position to huddle in fear inside our locked houses, more inclined to hide things, more inclined to trust our fellow man less.

In other words, I care because by being within a few thousand miles of the people who are wrongfully imprisoning that girl, I’m made less free. My soul is somehow vaugely tainted by her unhappiness.

I’ll be the first to support cops and other government figures when they’re stopping someone from stealing someone else’s belongings, or stopping someone from hurting someone else. But they should keep their laws off my morality. Let me state this as clearly as possible: it is not moral to legislate morality. It is not moral to enforce your morals on other people, and it is not clear that anything is morally ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ because I, you, or anyone else says it is. And even if something is immoral, well, imprisoning someone is immoral too. Do two wrongs make a right? Apparently in modern thinking they do..

I accept that I’m powerless. I accept that I can change nothing. I accept that all I can do is sit here and stare at the brokenness and wonder how on earth it got so broken. I accept that I’m probably a part of the brokenness – that by existing, I probably make things worse.

* = I’m leaning towards he, but only because it’s the majority opinion.

What business of the government’s – which is just a collection of people after all – is it if a couple of kids want to have sex? Yes, they should have been taught about the whole contraception thing, yes, they’re a little young.. but to lock them up for something that just about everyone wants to do? It’s beyond pathetic and somewhere deep into shameful. Whoever did the locking up oughta be the one locked up, in my view. Or, as Eddie from Callahan’s observed, ‘this world sucks.’

Well, okay, it could be worse. But this particular aspect of it sucks the big one.